Every Traveler Be Found
by HardlyFatal
Summary: Rin and Shippou, the next time around: it can be hard to come to terms with the knowledge you have to share your love with another. Even if the other is long dead. COMPLETE


**Author's Note:** for FieryFaerie86 for March 2006 flashfic (iyflashfic on LJ). The title from the poem "Prayer for the 21st Century" by John Marsden.

**Every Traveler Be Found**

There's nothing special about him. He's not too tall or short, not too fat or skinny, but he's just so achingly familiar to her that she can't stop watching him, can't stop studying how he moves his hands and slouches in his seat and chooses words when he talks.

There's something about the way he tilts his head that decides her one day, and she walks up to him after class to introduce herself.

"Hello," she says, boldly sticking out her hand. "I'm Rachael." Her face is bright and playful, and although she's got her hair in pigtails under that ridiculous flowered hat, he thinks she's pretty, so he grins at her and takes her hand in his. It feels good, wrapping her flesh in his, feels familiar in a way it shouldn't, and surprises him so that he doesn't let go.

"Sean," he replies at last. He's still shaking her hand, numbly and without thought. She laughs as she disengages herself from his grasp.

"See you next time, Sean," she tells him, and walks away. That, too, is familiar, and he sees a splinter of a memory—

_--her, but younger, departing yet again with her protector and reluctant green nanny—_

before it's gone. This is nothing new; he's had odd little remembrances before, and though Sister Mary Theresa scolded him thoroughly for it when he was in grade school, he never quite gave up the idea that he'd been there before. He's pretty sure he knew his best friend, Mike, before, and his sister Sonia annoys him so much he had to have a longer history with her than just this one lifetime.

Rachael, however, has had no such thoughts before, so while she is fine with indulging her impulse to meet him, as times wears on she wonders more about why she would do such a thing. Then, as is her way, she gets tired of wondering, and puts it out of her head. It's time for her botany class, anyway.

* * *

Rachael makes a point of greeting him, every class thereafter, and within days they are walking everywhere around campus together. After several weeks, Sean takes to walking her back to her dorm after her last class, late at night. When he finally kisses her, layers of light peel back to reveal another era, another time, when she wore a yellow and orange kimono and he had red hair and loved her from afar. 

Loved her for her crooked ponytail, loved her for her gap-toothed smile, loved her for her passion for flowers (even today, Sean cannot keep from smiling at the knowledge she is a horticulture major). When he holds her, he swears even the scent of her is imprinted upon his soul.

"I knew you before," she whispers against his throat. "I can feel the power in you. It's so familiar."

But she enjoys no such epiphanies, and grows more frustrated until she decides to do something about it.

"I'm going to be regressed to a past life," she announces one day. "I found a hypnotist who can do it."

And so he goes with her, sits across the room while she is sent back, back, and watches as she reviews a life she hasn't lived in centuries.

"My name was Rin," she begins. "I was an orphan, until I met him."

"Him?" prompts the therapist.

"He saved me," she says. "The wolves killed me, but he brought me back to life. He was invincible…" Her voice breaks. "I loved him. He was everything to me."

Sean's chest feels tight, as dread begins to creep inward. He didn't have any memories like this. He thinks he was, perhaps, some strange and non-human sort of being but he's fairly certain he didn't possess the power of life over death.

"Ask her what he looked like," he urges the therapist in a whisper, and grips the arms of his chair until his knuckles turn pale.

"He was tall," she says, dreamily. "He had long, long hair— white hair, and his eyes were golden."

A face materializes in Sean's mind's eye, but it is framed by two fluffy, triangular ears and just felt wrong.

"Ask her his name," he whispers.

"Sesshoumaru-sama," Rachael replies to the therapist's prompt, the tone adoring, almost worshipful.

And a memory springs up of a haughty creature, impossibly beautiful, dreadfully powerful. He sees Rachel— _Rin_— as a tiny child, then girl, then a young woman. He sees her clinging to her precious Sesshoumaru-sama, first his leg, then his hand, and finally his arm. He sees the light, the love, shining in her eyes, directed at _him_, always _him_.

"Never me," he murmurs, shutting his eyes. "Never Shippou."

She has heard him. "Shippou," she repeats, softly. "Shippou. I'm so glad I met you again. I thought everyone was lost to me forever."

Sean can't listen to any more. He stands, and his trembling hands bunch his ratty coat as he leaves the room. He flees to the pond in the middle of the college campus, and stands there a long time, skimming rocks as he fights to organize his thoughts.

She doesn't love him, is only with him because he's someone from her past; a fragile, tenuous connection to something infinitely precious.

"Sean," she calls to him, but he doesn't answer. She scrambles down the embankment, feet sliding on loose stones, to stand by his side, and tries again. "Shippou."

"Rachael," he replies. "Or is it Rin?"

She pauses. "I don't know," she admits. "Either. Maybe both." A gust of wind, cool and damp, rolls in from the lake, blows her hair in her face. Sean fights to keep his hands by his sides, to not brush it away for her. It's not for him to touch her in such an intimate way, not knowing what he knows.

Rachael huffs out a breath. "Why are you so upset?

"You were walking away from me," Sean replies, voice tight. "Toward him. Leaving me, and returning to him."

At this, she smiles hugely. "Idiot," she tells him, and punches his arm. "I was going to tell him I had chosen you. I was only leaving so I could return."

He stares at her a moment stretched long by disbelief, and hope gives his hand the strength to lift, touch her cheek. "But you loved him so much," he persists.

"I did," she agrees easily. "Don't you think there's room in my heart for both of you?" She looks troubled by the idea. "Especially since he's not here, and you are?" She steps closer, slipping her arms around his waist and holding him tightly. "It's just the two of us this time, Shippou."

His arms come up to hug her, tentatively at first, and then harder, until they're both gasping.

"Rin," he says into her hair. "Do you think we'll ever find any of the others?"

She leans back, grins impishly. "We already have," she replies. "Your best friend, Mike—"

"Miroku," he says, as it clicks in a blaze of comprehension.

"Your sister, Sonia—"

"Sango!"

"My brother, Ian. Haven't you always thought he was particularly irritating?"

Ian's face superimposes itself, in Sean's mind, with one that had golden eyes and a permanent scowl. "Inuyasha," he breathes, shocked. "But what about Kagome?" Longing for his surrogate sister fills him. "We have to find her."

"We will," she promises. "And maybe we can find Sesshoumaru-sama, too."

Jealousy knifes through Sean, but he tamps it down, refuses to give it its head. "Maybe," he hedges, and she laughs, squeezing him tighter.


End file.
